GRAFTON — It’s hot stove league season, the cold and barren baseball-less months between October and April, when diehard hardball fans gather around the fireplace or wood stove and dissect upcoming prospects and the glory days of yore.
Joe Anzivino and I convened one of those sessions this week in his cozy kitchen here. The sports pages are full of stories about Tom Brady’s greatness and the Patriots’ chances of another championship.
But it’s baseball that’s in Anzivino’s blood. Always has been. And he has a story I’ve come to hear about the greatest hitter who ever lived, Teddy Ballgame himself, Theodore Samuel Williams.
First a little background about Joe Anzivino. Now 78 and retired, he was the youngest of four children who grew up in Newton Upper Falls. His mother worked as a seamstress during World War II, making leather jackets for US pilots. His father was a landscaper. As a kid, when he wasn’t in school, he was on the ballfield or studying with youthful intensity statistics printed on the backs of baseball cards.
“We were little kids, and baseball meant everything to us,’’ he said.
When he was 10, he and a buddy won a competition on the local playground, tossing a ball into a roped-off perimeter to win a prize, which was a gleaming new baseball, a little boy’s version of a precious gem.
Joe’s pal, Ron, had an idea. The Red Sox star left fielder, Ted Williams, had moved into town. Why not pay him a visit and ask him to sign those new baseballs?
“We walked up to Lucille Place and we get to the house and Ronnie rings the bell,’’ Joe recalled as the years melt away and he pictures himself on the threshold of greatness. “And this big guy comes to the door. I’m telling you this guy is so big. It was an awesome, overwhelming presence. His head just about hit the top frame of the door. He was my idol. I’d never seen him up close. He says, ‘What can I do for you fellas?’ ’’
In the background, Anzivino heard the cries of a baby. That would be Williams’s daughter, Bobbi-Jo, who was born in January 1948, making her 5 months old at the time, if Anzivino has his admittedly cloudy chronology in order.
So the baby is crying and The Kid is not pleased. “And he says, ‘GD it, you just woke up my baby.’ So Ronnie says, ‘Can you autograph my baseball?’ He says, ‘All right’ and he grabs Ronnie’s ball. But I was slow on the draw.’’
When Williams returned with the signed ball, Anzivino asks for the same favor. “Why the hell didn’t you give it to me at the same time?’’ the future Hall of Famer demanded. But he took the ball, signed it, and came back with the autographed ball and a decidedly friendlier demeanor.
“So we took it,’’ Anzivino recalled. “We were excited. We just said thanks and we walked down the steps and the walkway and he opens the door again and he says: ‘Be good boys now. I’m going to hit a home run for each of you.’ Oh gosh, we couldn’t get over that.’’
Days later, when his pal informed him that Williams had, indeed, slammed two homers, a cherished moment slipped into Anzivino’s memory bank, a story that he tells only when prompted. And only the story remains. The autographed ball was not given an honored place on his living-room shelf. It could have fetched a small fortune, instead it was used on the ballfield by that little boy and, over time, lost.
So has been the precise date of Williams’s double-homer feat. It may well have come on June 24, 1948, when — as the Globe reported then — Williams’s two homers helped the Red Sox win the second game of a doubleheader against the White Sox at Comiskey Park.
“It’s something I’ll never forget,’’ Anzivino said. “A divine moment. It really happened.’’
Like him, I’m a true believer and, like him, ready for some baseball.
Thomas Farragher is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at thomas.farragher@globe.com.
